Sanctuary
by tartan robes
Summary: "He had picked Lady Mary up by her waist, raised her to all the high slants of the room as they had combed the hallways, half-blind, for black lace and pleasant things. Hunts to keep the nightmares at bay – had they been for her or for him? He didn't think much of it then, regretted thinking too hard of any of it." Carson and some fragments from the stage.


_Trying to get back into the swing of things, I suppose. This was a warm up piece, and it's kind of painfully clear how out of practice I am. But I figured it's nice to pretend you're alive again every so often. Title from a lovely comment the even lovelier Doctor Madwoman left me. I'm not sure how this actually fits into my actual headcanon for them, but, regardless. _

* * *

The stage had been full of darkness, he remembered that (more clearly than he liked to admit). It all had worked together in some interlocking kaleidoscope of shadow puppets, sliding against walls, women making their arms into wings, men's faces into dogs, howling music through the rafters. They had glowed under the stage's artificial sun, withered when it set, passed over them, when the curtains dropped and reeled to a tight close. Like all things, Charles remembered it in black and white.

There was a particular spot of blackness above the stage, between the jungle vines of ropes and pulleys and levers. A ladder propped up against the wall, a small balcony shielded with old fabric, deep purple velvet. The girls who performed after them, who didn't get the laughs the two of them did, but a sound of reverent silence, like a church of bowed heads (though heads were never bowed). He and Grigg had watched from the side, only ever seeing the careless roll of a shoulder, the curve of a swan's neck, the bend of her knee. And when they filed out, faces rosy, their skin still luminous, as if the stage light never left them, they had always woven they way to that ladder, climbed like princesses back into their tower. The air, usually stinging of old alcohol and sweaty palms, was perfumed, briefly, by their laughter.

He remembered the way the ropes had swung around them, the careless spin of skirts as they floated back on high.

Grigg had climbed the ladder, had been known to climb it more than once. Stepped too loudly and too eager, dog-faced and sweaty palmed. They had spent weeks staring at that canopy, their eyes too wide, he was sure, their jaws slacked, until one of the girls had poked her head back through the purple sheets. A round face, eyes that were bright and painted with dark rings of black, a too-red mouth, small and pouted. The powder on her face had made her seem spectral, unearthly. She had been beautiful, a detached sense of fantasy in her features. A hand had been busy, undoing the braid of re hair, and she had grinned like a fanged cat, extended a hand. Grigg had followed. He was always eager, always opportunistic, impulsive.

Carson had watched his then-friend, then-partner slip up through the veil, into the darkness.

For his part, he chose not to remember whether he had ever followed Grigg. Forgot the way the women moved, cramped against the low ceiling, purple shadows and red lips moving through smoke. He forgot the chorus of cherubs that gambled, the card games, the unbuttoning, hands leading men into slanted corners. Forgot, long ago, the angels spread out above the spotlight, the way they laughed, brash and without reserve.

He only chose to remember (and when he did, it was briefly, eyes squinted shut, tense with denial) his last visit, when the girls no longer performed and the lights had been harsh and too bright. The ladder had shook, purple had aged in dust. In the loft's emptiness, it seemed smaller, darker, full of demons and ghosts if anything at all. (But mostly, he had thought, nothingness.) There had been a playing card on the ground, the lingering smell of smoke, and a bird poking its way through a single hole, where the light pooled down in uneven strokes.

He had left the theatre, wholly and fully, that day.

* * *

Which was a lie, of sorts. Nothing ever left him, not wholly and never as fully as he wished.

He never dreamed often, not once he came to Downton. Dreaming left him in exchange for hard won sleep, black and heavy. High collars, stiff shoulders, every cut and angle designed to take the dreaming out of a man. He was thankful for it. He had dreamed too hard before, indulged too deeply. He had been the fool before. But now and then he would wake up with an owl-eyed girl staring back at him through shadow rafters. Lips stained and face pale and smiling at him, hands and shoulders all outstretched like wings. (She had become, that woman, the idea of beauty, he supposed. Or maybe sin. Mistakes. Bad desire. He told himself it was all wrong, shut his eyes, memorized rules and the different spoons for want of anything else. For want of feeling good – light – again.)

* * *

Remembering Downton was easier. The bustle of the hallways, the slow swanwalk through grand archways, silver in hand. He had been a good footman, a capable valet. There had been children and they had been angels, truly. Angels who moved in pastel dresses, picked and threw flowers. Angels who had stood at the top of the stairs in the middle of the night, searching for a lost glove or a good dream. (He had picked Lady Mary up by her waist, raised her to all the high slants of the room as they had combed the hallways, half-blind, for black lace and pleasant things. Hunts to keep the nightmares at bay – had they been for her or for him? He didn't think much of it then, regretted thinking too hard of any of it.)

Other memories. The head housemaid who curved away from people, but with careful smiles and a voice that was half a stranger to him. She had kept to herself and he had done much the same and, inevitably, as all things were, they had kept to themselves together. Her smiles had been less careful in their interludes. They had sat in abandoned hallways, him with old collars and her with some mending, recited rules back to one another. It had been a test, maybe. He had viewed it as a challenge; there had been more mocking in her voice. Maybe it had meant nothing too.

He remembered a servant's ball. They had laughed, maybe, he had handed her a glass of wine. "I hate dancing," she had said then and he had agreed, wholly and fully. (Later, when duty called for it, they would learn the new steps.)

A Christmas, when she handed him a knit pair of gloves. A walk with her to the village. There had been mostly silence between the two of them, but it had been comfortable, lighter than saying anything else, anything past. He thought they both had stories they'd rather not say, and that was why they had gravitated to one another, orbits dancing careful circles from safe distances. There had been rules, ones they had dictated religiously in actions and stern words, reprimands, and they had loved this world for having them. A friendship built on kindnesses, yes, but efficiency too. There hadn't been many jokes then. They learned to laugh later still, always later.

* * *

He was a butler before she was a housekeeper, but she was never far behind him.

They transformed then, grew owl eyes, stayed up at night combing through books. He had done up his cuffs in her newfound nest, and she had checked the arithmetic twice over, never asking him for help (she was always better at it, the numbers and logic and the sense, the practical). They had recited the rules back to each other in new chants, woven their words with new routines. And their smiles had been hesitant because they were teaching their heads new tilts (higher, prouder, more authoritative), stricter vocabularies. They orbited closer in the night.

He had found her one evening, when the hallways were dark, the sun long set and the hour ripe for dream hunting (but Lady Mary had not had a nightmare in years and so nightly rounds, locking doors and adjusting crooked angles, were spent in uneasy silence – loneliness). The accounts had been opened and she had been asleep in her chair. (She had spent many late nights in the earliest of their years, before her body adjusted to the position. She had wanted to get it right, he supposed. Perfectionism was a shared fault, but only a fault in private.)

To leave her there, he had thought that night, would be wrong. All the servants had already been carefully ushered to sleep (they enjoyed these moments most, maybe, the sense of isolation in the mess; at these hours, she would take the goblet from his hands, have a second glass of wine). He had been still in that room for a long time, though, aged and stiff and unsure of how hands pulled bodies through shadows, unsure of what was to be done. (He had forgotten. He had remembered.) He had gone over her charts before carefully pulling the chair back, lifting her carefully, holding her, bent, against his chest.

He had thought that this was ridiculous. She was not a child and he was not a young man and the two of them had been well into middle-age then. He thought this was the behaviour of boys. (Stage boys, something in his mind amended.)

He had prayed, though, for her not to wake up. For though she had learned how to dance (and she danced very well, though never with him, never too much more than necessary), she still didn't welcome touch. He was certain, in the way best of friends are, that she would hit him very hard if awoke.

He had climbed the steps and thought of a ladder. And his pulse and beating heart had been tight against his skin and he had imagined, maybe, her fingers curling, slight, against his chest, holding to his tie. His muscles had ached.

He had thought, too, of waking a maid. The door between the two quarters was, perhaps, the most solid rule of all. The space between all of their sentences, the distance between orbits. But to see her like this, perhaps, would undermine her authority. He wouldn't, he would never, have that. He had touched her hips, briefly, barely, unlocked the door with a palm coated thinly in sweat.

Her room was the one attached, as much as it could be, to his, the door the barricade between them. It had been dark and he had squinted, arms strained and burning dimly, to find her bed. He hadn't looked around, hadn't tried to see her things. He had felt his face flush at the thought of being here, behind these curtains, of seeing what was not his right to see. She had never held out a hand. She had never invited him in.

He knew, beneath her dress, that there was a corset. Had felt it in his arms and as he lay her down on her bed, thought that surely women didn't sleep in them, that surely that was not ideal. The thought crossed him to undress her, and the thought had been as dark as the room and he had burned from carrying her, burned red from thinking those uninvited thoughts. His hands had pulled the covers over her, black dress and brown hair falling, slightly around the pins. Her skin had been luminous with some internal candlelight. She had looked very much like a child, like a small girl to be held and kissed, gently, on the nose or cheek or forehead. An innocent sort of thing. She had looked like the woman she was too, and as his eyes adjusted he had realized he knew quite a bit of her. The curve of her shoulder was a familiar sight; the shape her mouth made when she breathed out was carved into his mind.

He was staring. He was uninvited.

Carson had turned, maybe too quickly, maybe not quietly enough, turned and tiptoed back into the darkness.

* * *

He dreamed of purple curtains. Of some mountainous climb. And the sheets had parted into a labyrinth of light and dark. He thought there were stars overhead, but felt them more than he saw. A dancing woman, the bend of her knee, a curving arm. Her face, pale and glowing, in profile. She had turned her head and breathed out of her mouth and the shape had been the most familiar sight in the world (and his chest had knotted and beat, violent and constrained, against his bones). She had smiled at him. She had extended a hand.

The nightmares had left him then.


End file.
